The guards didn't leave me on the first level. They marched me straight down a steep, winding spiral staircase that descended deeper into the earth, forcing me into the Second Level of the Citadel.
Since I had timed my arrest perfectly to pass right after midnight, a heavy, suffocating silence hung over the entire block. The teeming mass of convicts who normally populated these tiers were fast asleep in their cages. We navigated the dark, stone-carved corridors until we reached a central iron staircase leading up to a raised catwalk. My designated cell was located on the second floor of this level, clearly marked with a rusted iron placard labeled Floor 2-B.
The guard shoved me forward one last time.
"Get in there, 345. Lock down."
The heavy iron door slammed shut behind me with a resounding, metallic crash, and the deadbolts slid into place with a mechanical hiss. I stood in the cramped, damp space, my iron chains rattling softly.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim candlelight of the cell, I realized I wasn't alone. Sitting up on the top mattress of a rusted metal bunk bed was my new roommate. I didn't know his name yet, but the white patch crudely stitched onto his faded orange uniform boldly displayed his identity: Inmate 222.
Inmate 222 looked down at me, his eyes sharp despite his worn features. He was an older man, clearly somewhere in his fifties, with a graying beard and deeply lined skin that spoke of a long, brutal stay inside these walls.
"Greetings, 345," he murmured, his voice a low, raspy gravel that barely carried across the quiet cell.
I gave him a slow, measured nod, keeping up the quiet demeanor of the street rat while I rapidly evaluated my surroundings. Because this entire block was part of a massive subterranean fortress dug deep into the bedrock beneath the sea, there wasn't a single window in sight. The only illumination came from the faint glow of the magical torches out on the catwalk, filtering through the small iron grate of the cell door.
I leaned my back against the cold stone wall and breathed a genuine, profound sigh of relief. The lack of windows was a masterpiece of luck. Being buried this deep in the lower levels meant that no matter how long my interrogation of Luke took, the lethal morning sunlight would never be able to reach me. My vampiric nature was completely safe in this eternal, subterranean darkness.
My first instinct was to immediately assert dominance and show Inmate 222 exactly how terrifying I could be. But a mastermind has to calculate the risks. He was my roommate; if I brutally beat him right now, he would likely report me to the morning guards, and chances are I'd be thrown straight into solitary confinement before I could even start tracking down Luke.
I glanced up at the top bunk where he was resting. The wall beside his mattress was absolutely covered in pin-up posters of beautiful women. According to every prison movie I'd ever seen, taking the top bunk is the ultimate sign of dominance, it sets the entire "main character" vibe for the cell block. If I wanted to run this prison, I needed that bed. It was time to adopt an edgy persona.
I leaned against the wall, narrowed my eyes, and let out a cold, edgy scoff.
"Hey, old hag, that's my bunk. Get down." I muttered in a low, biting tone.
Inmate 222 didn't even flinch. He leaned over the edge of the mattress, looking down at me with pure contempt.
"No way, you micropenis. Shut the hell up and take the floor."
My eye twitched. The old bastard must have heard the processing guards loudly mocking me down in the intake sector. He knew exactly what Keane was working with, a three-inch, uncircumcised tragedy.
Maintaining my edgy persona, I didn't bother arguing. Instead, I channeled every bit of physical leverage I had left. Even though my vampiric strength was heavily suppressed down to a normal human level by these wretched magic-dampening chains, I could still move with explosive speed.
BANG!
I delivered a sharp, violent kick straight to the underside of the top bunk's metal frame. The entire structure rattled violently, launching the old man upward. With a loud thud, his head smacked directly into the low stone ceiling of the cell.
He groaned loudly, rubbing his crown as he tumbled off the top mattress and crashed heavily onto the bottom bunk.
I casually hopped up, grabbing the cold metal railing with my chained wrists, and swung myself onto the top bunk. I laid back against the dirty pillow, looking down at him through the dark.
"Oi, easy there. The bottom one is all yours." I said, a dangerous, edgy smirk playing on Keane's face.
Inmate 222 scrambled out of the top bunk, grunting as he hit the floor. As he tried to steady himself, I casually slid past him and gave him a sharp, intimidating nudge with the point of my shoulder. He stumbled back, staring at me with wide, panicked eyes. My edgy, aggressive display had worked perfectly, he officially saw me as a massive threat.
With the top bunk successfully secured, I sat back against the wall to admire my new kingdom. I turned my attention to the collection of beautiful, sexy posters plastered around the mattress, and my eyes widened as I easily identified the faces.
The poster directly on the left was Alta, the famous public figure, striking a dramatic propaganda pose that featured a highly seductive, revealing outfit positioned right where Inmate 222's head usually rested. But when I looked up at the poster taped directly to the ceiling, my heart nearly stopped.
It was my own older sister, Elicia.
The poster proudly displayed the principal of the prestigious Sisiphon Magic Academy, a stunning, silver-haired girl with piercing crimson eyes. She was depicted sitting elegantly in her grand armchair, her legs crossed in a way that made her thighs look incredibly seductive and revealing. A wave of absolute horror washed over me. Inmate 222 was a total degenerate, unashamedly gooning to high-profile women, celebrities, and apparently, my own flesh and blood.
Before I could even process the disgust of seeing my sister on a prison wall, Inmate 222 rubbed his sore head and looked up at me with a sickening, proud grin.
"Hey, hey, boy... you might want to rethink changing those bedsheets, the people in this Citadel don't call me the 'Holy Masturbator' for nothing. I can ejaculate five times a day just by glancing at my posters."
A sudden, deeply disturbing realization hit me. I froze, suddenly hyper-aware of the textures around me. A weird, damp sensation seeped through my uniform. I looked down, and to my absolute horror, the bedsheets were covered in crusty, dried stains. The blankets were literally drenched in a sticky white liquid, and the pillow I was leaning against had a crude, makeshift hole cut right into the center of it… manifestly designed for him to stick his tragic little tool into.
"GAH!"
I let out a completely unscripted, horrified shriek, instantly scrambling off the mattress like it was made of literal fire. I leaped off the top bunk, dry-heaving as I desperately wiped my hands against my orange jumpsuit. My edgy, "main character" plan to assert absolute dominance had been thoroughly, brutally shattered by a level of pure, unadulterated freakiness I was not legally or spiritually prepared for.
I glared at the old man, my face twisting into pure revulsion as I pointed a shaking finger back at the top mattress.
"You know what? Take it! Take your bunk back, you absolutely disgusting freak!" I hissed, my edgy persona completely breaking down into raw disgust.
Inmate 222 just chuckled, entirely unfazed, and happily began climbing back up to his biohazard zone. Defeated by a weaponized level of degeneracy, I reluctantly walked over to the bottom bunk, checked it for any suspiciously damp spots, and slumped onto the mattress. Navigating the prison hierarchy was going to be a lot harder, and a lot grosser, than I originally anticipated.
I spent an agonizing few minutes aggressively wiping the remnants of that foul liquid off my orange uniform, glaring up at the posters of Alta and my sister Elicia with a mixture of trauma and disbelief. Defeated, I practically forced myself into the relative safety of the bottom bunk, pulling my knees to my chest to avoid touching anything more than I had to.
From the biohazard zone above, Inmate 222 poked his wrinkled face over the edge.
"Don't worry, kid, I've been doing this since way before you arrived here. You get used to the smell." he said with a completely straight face.
"Shut up. Just shut up," I groaned, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes.
But the old man wasn't done being a menace. He scrambled down from the top bunk and approached the wall where the seductive propaganda poster of Alta was taped. With a dramatic flourish, he peeled the paper back. Beneath it, the stone wall was covered in a chaotic mess of jagged, shallow scratches.
Inmate 222 reached into his jumpsuit pocket with a conspiratorial smirk and pulled out a standard, slightly bent metal commissary spoon. He pressed the tip against the rock, aggressively digging up a tiny flake of dust.
He leaned in close, whispering loudly,
"Hey, Inmate 345... guard the perimeter. Keep an eye on the door. I'm making a tunnel out of here."
I stared at him for a solid three seconds. Then, the sheer, staggering absurdity of it broke me. I let out a sharp, mocking laugh, completely dropping my edgy persona to openly ridicule him.
"Hey, you old hag, who exactly are you tunneling to? The next cell over? You think you're going to dig through a maximum-security magical fortress with a soup spoon?!" I sneered, pointing at the pathetic scratch marks on the solid mountain bedrock.
Inmate 222 froze, his spoon hovering in mid-air. He looked at the wall, then looked at the spoon, and then looked back at the wall. A slow, crushing realization washed over his face as he finally registered that his grand escape plan was entirely, completely worthless. He was literally just digging a hole into the adjacent cage.
"You old hag, you're an absolute dumbass." I muttered, rolling my eyes and slumping back onto my mattress.
He sighed, defeated, and pocketed his spoon before shuffling back up to his bunk to presumably goon himself to sleep.
I lay in the dark, staring up at the springs of the top bunk. My master plan to infiltrate the Citadel, dominate the yard, and interrogate Luke Granhart had led me here: locked in a subterranean box, temporarily drained of my magic, and stuck with a mindless, masturbating hog of a roommate who couldn't even map out a basic escape route. I was surrounded by idiots.
I closed my eyes, letting out a long, exhausted breath.
"Just survive until morning, tomorrow, the real work begins."